Radio Requiem
by TheDarkFlygon
Summary: A communication failure is all you need to lose track of someone. Kaede learns that the hard way on one day where she, truly, doesn't enjoy being the head of communications and information transmission. [OS, 47 Survivors AU, lowkey Saimatsu, some friendships]


Kaede likes her occupation as the leader of the Communications Branch of her Division. She enjoys broadcasting music to cleanse the populations from despair, soothing the pain of people with well-placed words and to be able to transfer commands emitted by other branches and divisions to the people she's assigned to communicate with. It's mostly forces on the field, the Action Branch of the Fourteenth Division, and sometimes their investigators. It makes going to work everyday fun even during the apocalypse and the clean-up needed after it, even when she wakes up almost in the same place she works in, even if she sees the same forty people every single day. It's fine, because she's alive, because she's surrounded by her friends and those who are more than that. To Kaede, every day is fine because she has an interesting and important position to fill, where she leads and is active all-day long, and there is seldom exception to this custom.

Today is _not_ one of the days where she enjoys having this important position in the Division.

It starts innocently enough, for a day where she serves as the main relay between the investigation lead by the appropriate branch and the rest of the Division: she's tasked with assuring the communication between the team sent to a Despair-filled hole and her branch, relaying information between both sides and sending orders from the Administration Branch back to the ones on the field. This is business as usual, for her, these days: the Investigation Branch is discovering more and more zones where the Division has to cleanse Despair from the map, following a trail discovered by the head of the branch and ex-Ultimate Detective, Kyoko.

Speaking of Kyoko, she's noticeably absent from today's mission. That's to be expected: people deserve their rest, sometimes, and Hajime kind of forced her not to throw herself in some exhausting mission again by fear of watching her get sick from overworking. Also not strangely enough, it's combined efforts from Makoto and Shuichi who convinced her to stay put and entrust the mission to her second-in-command.

And what a second-in-command it is! Truth be told, Kaede is looking forward to being able to mostly discuss things out with Shuichi, who accepted leading the mission (not without some doubts, but he made an effort and didn't protest Kyoko's decision). Of course, the latter didn't send him there alone when he's, frankly, not the strongest nor the fittest for survival in the Despair Wastelands. Instead, he's accompanied by whom Kaede could only call a dream duo: Maki and Mukuro.

Their team is small because the hole is small and requires precision work without being spotted by a group of brainwashed renegades. There is no soothing music to play, no wide broadcast of their latest attempt at cleaning the world from misery: all there is, is following strict, military-like instructions. Mukuro is the one who's going to give the orders about the field matters, but Kaede knows she's the one who will make sure they'll still be alive by the end of the mission.

And the beginning of the mission is smoother than anything she's seen in a while coming from how dangerous and perilous this stuff always gets. The anxiety pumping in her veins and making her body tremble with a sickening excitation doesn't thump as strongly as usual against her chest, the expected dizziness doesn't come to their usual meeting point. The three field agents communicate to her in real time, giving her short descriptions of the location (an abandoned factory, or rather, what's left of its ruins, floor covered in dried blood and metal walls decorated with decapitated stuffed Monokuma dolls, nothing that scares her anymore), speaking of the people staying there they fight against. Exceptionally, she can hear the scream of one of the brainwashed followers trying to attack her friends, but she then always hears the weapon Maki or Mukuro hold in their hands and the voice disappears from her field of hearing.

They hold small conversations, when it's calm, in whispers on their part. As expected, Kaede mostly communicates with Shuichi, who is guarded by the two more soldier-like agents. His voice is naturally fairly low, discreet and sometimes hard to notice unless you know he's speaking and think of tuning into it. Yet, his words are soft, more to soothe himself than her, and she likes to encourage him with a few simplistic words, "you'll do it", "you'll come back, I promise", "Maki and Mukuto are with you, with them, you won't be in danger".

It's not small talk, but it may have been just as pointless. They don't really discuss anything of grand matters: Shuichi is usually terrified to speak too loudly, despite his quiet voice, and neither Maki nor Mukuro likes to speak more than absolutely needed. Kaede knows this is the downside of the job: she cannot break their focus, no matter if there are enemies nearby or not. Still, she takes this opportunity to enforce some bonds, make sure none of them feels useless or unloved, and she thinks she's damn good at that job. This is where she feels like she's needed and effective, and if Maki herself doesn't speak against that, then she can only conclude that she is, indeed, competent and maybe made for that position.

That's until she starts speaking to pure static piercing her eardrums and forcing her to, for a moment, take off her headphones as not to damage her most important sense.

The communication has cut off entirely on her and, in that moment, Kaede is blanking completely. Her mind doesn't react immediately, instead nosediving into panic when it should have been way more useful that fooling around in her brain like that was going to solve anything.

Before she lets herself completely sink into panic, her hands activate to follow the usual procedure in case this happens. She checks the systems she's using, communicators and operating system alike, makes sure she has a connection to the radio network, and she hopes that it's the issue there, because Chihiro and Kazuichi will be able to do something about it; but everything is working fine on her end. She tries contacting everyone individually, and initially, her hopes rise up again.

"Maki? Maki, do you copy?!" She screams in a panic.

"Roger," followed by a gun recharging.

"Mukuro, do you copy?!"

"…copied," followed by a shotgun going off.

"Shuichi, do you copy?"

Static.

"Shuichi, do you copy?!"

Still static. It's like gazing into the abyss only for it to look back at her in complete silence.

She's left dumbfounded, realizing Maki and Mukuro are involved in a fight and won't be able to reply properly until they're done neutralizing whomever is in front of them. As such, she listens to firearms going off and on with anxiety, only able to tell her comrades are winning because the sound are near her, and she closes her eyes to forget about how bad this is going.

Sayaka must have noticed her sudden uneasiness, because she puts her hand on hers and asks her in a hushed voice is something has gone wrong. Kaede replies with a small nod, holding onto her headphones' microphone for her life.

The gunfight ends with the communications still functioning, so she takes the opportunity to get the answers to the questions bouncing around her head like machine gun shots.

"Maki, Mukuro, what happened?! Everything cut off in static suddenly and I can't contact Shuichi anymore!"

"They detonated a smoke bomb," Maki replies with a calm that, nowadays, betrays her own stress. "Used that to assault us from behind. When the smoke let off, they attacked and he was gone. We have no idea where he is."

Kaede's heart sinks to the ground, but she transmits the information to her higher-up so the head of the Field Branch can decide what to do.

"Are you two okay?" She asks instead.

"We are," Mukuro responds in a stoic tone.

"That's a relief."

Kaede gets an incoming call from Sakura, head of the Field Branch: search for Shuichi if the situation allows for it. She quickly relays the message to the agents she's just spoken to, starting the new objective. Things seems to have calmed down for now, but the anxiety remains in her heart: no matter how much she tries to contact Shuichi's earphone, she can't reach it, or she gets pure static and nothing else she can distinguish from the mess.

She's anxious enough to listen to every detail coming from Maki and Mukuro's lines: footsteps, glass crunching, breathing echoing. They don't speak, all focused on the matter at hand, and her hands are all over the place. Sayaka puts a cup of tea next to her, giving her a small, awkward but honest smile, and she thanks her with a nod. Her mouth feels like it's suddenly gone entirely dry on her.

The silence lasts and lasts, seconds turning into minutes and the clock seemingly freezing on her, the activity in the office unable to distract her as she can't let herself get her attention on anything but the mission at hand. It's not just for her, clearly not: she's worried for Maki and Mukuro, for what could happen to them, even if they inform her of more and more details the more they distance themselves from their starting point (much to her relief and pleasure to know what's happening to these two), and she's even more concerned for Shuichi whose whereabouts are absolutely unknown.

Kaede prepares herself for the worse. They haven't been able to tell where and how he was for more than half an hour: he can't be unharmed when he's gone off their radars for so long. At best, he's injured and trapped somewhere, all alone, but this way not surrounded by enemies; at worse, he's already dead and they're searching for a corpse to bring back to the Division and hold funerals for. She tries her best not to picture him as one of the many cadavers she's seen ever since the apocalypse started, fighting her hardest against the morbid part of herself.

Nervously, she hums to herself, waiting for a real update. The song's identity doesn't matter, that's not the point. She isn't here to do a soothing concerto, she's here to assure a relay she failed to secure entirely, and guilt is clawing at her throat. She's failed accomplishing the one mission she was assigned by her higher-ups, let down Kyoko for putting her second-in-command in danger, and, most of all, she's abandoned her most precious friend, the one who is more than a friend in fact, to the horrors of the brainwashed.

How is she supposed to face anyone else, now that she's let every single one of them down?

"Kaede! Kaede, do you copy?!" Maki's urgent tone gets her back to her headphones right as she's about to slap herself for daydreaming.

"Y-yes, I copy! What's wrong?!"

"We've found him."

She lets out the biggest sigh of relief before pulling herself back together, drying her tears with the sleeves of her blazer.

"Problem: we're surrounded by Despair followers. They're armed with knives, one of them has a gun. If we shoot, they spot us. We'll contact you again when we're done."

"Roger."

Kaede presses another button to transmit the information back to the Field and Investigation Branches. She's certain Shuichi is still alive and breathing by now: Maki would have told her otherwise, wouldn't make the suspense last and get worse for everyone involved. Mukuro and she know what they're doing more than Kaede could ever pretend to, so she stays quiet and focus, listens to firearms going off and people screaming in pain, hearing the same propaganda-worthy slogans get repeated and repeated as the Division does its job.

Eventually, the sound quiets down and she can hear his breathing, fast and febrile, as she's always heard it, even if it's slightly worse. She doesn't let herself cry in relief despite the intensity of the emotional rollercoaster hitting her full force by now, her body untensing in one go and leaving her vulnerable but euphoric.

"Kaede?" A welcome soft voice comes back to her, timid, as footsteps are heard again. "Kaede, do you hear me?"

"Shuichi, you're back with us?!"

"Yeah… Sorry for the scare," he coughs loudly, gritting his teeth, "I didn't see them coming for me. My earphone broke when I fell. I'm borrowing Maki's for the time being, I'll give it back to her soon."

"Are you alright? You sound like you're in pain."

"I think I broke my wrist or something, but I'll be fine. Again, sorry for scaring you and the others so much."

"It's fine, Shuichi, it's not your fault. We're just relieved that you're safe and back to us now."

Oh, before he gives the earphone back, she needs to tell him one last thing.

"You don't even know how happy I am to be able to talk to you, Shuichi."

"I'm glad we can speak together too, Kaede. I'll have to leave you for now, see you later."

With this, Maki takes her earphone back while she regains her enthusiasm. Everything has been fine, today; and even if the stress she stored until now crashes down into exhaustion, she's happier than anything she could be feeling right now.


End file.
